[center][h2][b]Ilshar Ard’sabekh[/b][/h2][/center]


[i]Currents like trails of scent stirred by drifting tendrils that beat the fluid ether where the air mingles…[/i] Focused into the condensed sporelike projection he had cast upward, Ilshar’s conscious thoughts swayed like reeds in the chasmic drift, following its motions even as his perception coiled around the shape that had emerged from the fog. It approached - [i]they[/i] approached, close, too close. A disharmonious effort of will might have been all they needed to find his scent. [i]No eyes no face not blind they saw felt scented hungered soon they wound hunger no more soon they would feed soon soon too soon…[/i]

As Ilshar had feared, the voidhanger’s shroud had unintended effects in this ether-saturated place. The squad’s transition to concealment had been too abrupt. No physical eyes had been on them to notice the difference, but the entities of the Chasm needed no eyes. It was already a gift from the Nexus if they had not fully sensed the Envenomed yet, evidently having a kind of sight of their own, but it was a blessing that had to be used quickly. The creatures were already moving dangerously close to the gap.

With a concerted effort of will, Ilshar disentangled his consciousness from the ether-spore simulacrum he had cast into the rift in the ceiling. He did not hurry to rejoin it to his body in case the entities could trail it, and painstaking seconds passed before the blind flow of ether currents gave way to the familiar sight of his helmet interior and the sensation of serried teeth pressed against his tongue.

[b]“No way above,”[/b] he hissed in a stifled voice. A tarrhaidim could not really be out of breath, but he was still partly in the flash of reacquainting himself with his bodily functions. [b]“There’s ether-spawn there, huge ones, a whole pack. The cloak - they felt a disturbance, know we might be here. We need to move forward, fast.”[/b]

The tip of Ilshar’s tongue brushed against something smooth and solid. Encased in his void-membrane suit, there was no easy way for him to retrieve the container with the drug that allowed him to ride the immaterial spouts that touched the Abyssal Plain. He had thus prepared a few doses of it in small capsules, embedded into the rotting tissue of his mouth. Even if they were so close in reach, however, there was no time now; the trance that could carry him to the Abyss was a profound, sluggish one, and the etheric predators would have been on them before he could go through its motions.

The damaged door ahead remained the only path, and sinister though it was, it could only be safer than lingering in place now.